NEA to support laws that let students opt out of testing

Posted: Saturday, July 07, 2001

LOS ANGELES -- In its strongest stance yet against standardized testing, the National Education Association on Friday voted to support legislation giving parents the ability to let their children skip the tests.

"If you want to know how your child is doing, you don't wait seven months to get the results of a standardized test," said Judi Hirsch, an Oakland, Calif., algebra teacher who introduced the measure."You ask your kid's teacher."

The teachers union objects to the emphasis on testing, a cornerstone of President Bush's education plan and a central element of many school districts' programs.

The measure directs the NEA's lobbyists to fight mandatory testing requirements on a federal level. It doesn't direct state delegations to lobby for laws allowing parents to opt out of testing, but it does promise union support to state-level lobbyists who do so.

"The delegates have indicated that they do not want high-stakes testing," said Mary Elizabeth Teasley, the NEA's director of government relations. While the union doesn't oppose testing in general, it favors using a variety of indicators to help schools decide whether children are learning.

The NEA's 9,000 delegates on Friday also approved a resolution encouraging state and local school officials to use several kinds of assessments when testing whether students have learned.

Congress this year is expected to approve sweeping K-12 education legislation that includes mandatory state testing in reading and math. Every public school student in grades three through eight and one year in high school would be tested. President Bush campaigned on the theme, which has widespread support in both the House and Senate.

Meanwhile, more school districts are mandating standardized tests as they move toward giving taxpayers a complete picture of student performance. Some tests, deemed"high-stakes," even determine whether students graduate or are promoted.

Across the nation, small groups of parents and students have begun boycotting the tests.

Most recently, dozens of high schoolers at a New York City school boycotted the state Board of Regents exam in English, saying the time spent preparing for the exams could be better used for other school projects.

Last spring, two-thirds of the eighth-graders at Scarsdale Middle School in prosperous Westchester County, N. Y., boycotted state exams. Similar boycotts have been staged in Michigan and Massachusetts.

"It's just a total setup for failure," said Hirsch, who wore a T-shirt reading,"High stakes are for tomatoes."

She said many standardized tests place children's performance on a 0-100 percent scale, putting an average student at 50 a figure usually associated with a failing grade.

U. S. Education Department spokeswoman Lindsey Kozberg said a standardized test score is an important tool for teachers and parents looking for answers about children's performance.

"It's a source of information that every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every educational policy maker in the country needs to have about student progress," she said."This data is what's going to tell us what's working and what isn't."

In other action, the union approved forming a partnership with the American Federation of Teachers, once a rival union. AFT members will vote on the partnership July 11.

The NEA has about 2. 6 million members nationwide. AFT has more than 1 million members, most located in urban school districts. Unlike those in the NEA, AFT members belong to AFL-CIO.

Harcourt agrees to new contract with stiffer penalties

ATLANTA -- State school officials confirmed Friday that San Antonio-based Harcourt Educational Measurement has agreed to a new, $690,000 contract to provide and process Stanford 9 tests for Georgia.

The new contract includes stiff penalties if the company is late returning results or if the exams include errors.

The state contract pays for testing in grades three, five and eight. School districts in Georgia spend about $2 million more for the Stanford 9 in other grades.

The final contract will be delivered Monday, said Amanda Seals, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Education.

Harcourt missed deadlines to deliver test results in May and June. Because they were late, the results could not be used as diagnostic tools before the end of the school year.

Harcourt President Eugene Paslov appeared before the state board last month, requesting another chance and promising to do better. Since then, Harcourt has missed another deadline the delivery of systemwide results to districts by June 30.

The problems come only a year after the board agreed to switch tests, mainly because the Stanford 9 was cheaper. Before that decision, the same version of the Iowa Test had been given to Georgia children for years.